52 Weeks – Week 6 – Ode to Spot

Felis Catus is your taxonomic nomenclature.
An endothermic quadruped, carnivorous by nature.
Your visual, olfactory, and auditory senses
contribute to your hunting skills, and natural defenses.
I find myself intrigued by your subvocal oscillations,
a singular development of cat communications
that obviates your basic hedonistic predilection
for a rhythmic stroking of your fur, to demonstrate affection.
A tail is quite essential for your acrobatic talents;
you would not be so agile if you lacked its counterbalance.
And when not being utilized to aide in locomotion,
it often serves to illustrate the state of your emotion.
O Spot, the complex levels of behavior you display
connote a fairly well-developed cognitive array.
And though you are not sentient, Spot, and do not comprehend,
I nonetheless consider you a true and valued friend.

Written by Data for his pet cat Spot (actually written by Brannon Braga for the ST:TNG episode “Schisms”), the Ode to Spot is one of the more memorable little pieces of Star Trek that fans enjoy. To quote the whole thing is a true sign of Trekkieness. But to set the whole thing to music — well! It just needed to happen! So, for my junior recital, I did just that, and sang it with three myselves (if that’s a word) three times. How, you may ask? Let this recording from my actual junior recital tell you (part 1/part 2).

Jaff, Joff, and Juff were drawings of myself on the chalkboard made by Johnathan Whiting, and at the end I erased their mouths, so that no more villainous characters could make me sing it again. This was one of the funnest parts of my recital, and although the song itself is nothing groundbreaking, it’s still a fun little tune set to a very memorable set of lyrics (memorable not in anybody’s ability to actually remember the words, but just remember that they heard something so ludicrous). This was also before I learned how to pronounce “hedonistic,” apparently.